Wife Tattoo Her Ex Name On Her Chest & ᴠᴀɢɪɴᴀ 2 Wks After Wedding–Husband Divorced Her, She Sh0t Him | HO

On a quiet Tuesday evening in a middle-class neighborhood, 43-year-old property manager Smith Monroe walked into the house he had bought only months earlier, carrying an $87 bottle of bourbon and a folder of divorce paperwork.

By 9:15 p.m., he was lying on his own floor, shot multiple times by the woman he had married just two weeks earlier.

That woman, Leslie Pope Monroe, would later tell 911 dispatchers that “two masked men” had burst into the house, demanded money, assaulted her, and gunned down her husband before fleeing into the night.

The crime scene, however, did not look like a robbery.

Nothing was stolen.
There was no forced entry.
Smith still had hundreds of dollars in cash in his wallet.

And the most damning detail surfaced almost immediately: hidden in Leslie’s phone, in a long thread of messages and photos, detectives discovered what prosecutors would call the “emotional engine” of the case — two fresh tattoos placed days earlier, one on her chest and another near her most private area, each bearing the same initials:

H.B.

Leslie had told her new husband those letters meant “heartbeat.”

They did not.

They stood for Henry Brandon, the man she’d spent seven years chasing, the ex-boyfriend she couldn’t let go of, and the man she believed she deserved — even after he blocked her, married someone else, and told her to leave him alone.

By the time the case reached a jury, those three initials—H.B.—had become shorthand for an entire story of obsession, manipulation, and calculated murder.

This is the reconstructed narrative of how a marriage built on lies collapsed in less than a month, and how a woman’s refusal to accept rejection ended in a hail of gunfire.

I. The Seven-Year Obsession

Before she became Mrs. Monroe, Leslie Pope was 34 and adrift.

She had grown up watching other women live the lifestyle she craved: high-end restaurants, designer bags, carefully curated social media feeds broadcasting a life of soft lighting and soft luxury. She didn’t necessarily want fame, but she wanted what she believed came with money: security, admiration, and status.

When she met Henry Brandon, she believed she had found the foundation for that life.

Henry was not rich. He was a construction worker. He woke at 5 a.m., worked long days on job sites, and came home exhausted, his clothes smelling of dust and sweat. He could not afford the kind of life Leslie scrolled past on her phone. But he had something else she wanted: emotional intensity.

By all accounts, Henry was grounded, physically strong but not domineering, steady without being dull. In Leslie’s words to friends, he was “the one” — the man who made her check her phone every few minutes, cancel plans with friends to stay free when he called, and bend every part of her life around his schedule.

For seven years, they were on and off. Through all of it, one theme persisted: Henry never proposed.

To Leslie, that became the central problem.

She wanted a ring, a wedding, and a legal guarantee that all her emotional investment would pay off. Henry, increasingly aware of her behavior, didn’t trust her. And he had reasons.

Midway through their relationship, Henry started noticing small details: new shoes, new handbags, perfumes Leslie never used to wear. He hadn’t bought them. She did not have a job that could support those purchases. When he asked, she brushed it off.

One night, suspicious, he went through her phone while she showered — and found messages that made everything click.

Leslie had been seeing other men. Not for love, she insisted, but for money and gifts. She used dating apps, met men in hotels and restaurants, and “arranged” evenings. Sometimes there was sex, sometimes just “companionship,” but there was always an exchange of money or things.

Leslie’s justification was blunt: Henry couldn’t give her what she wanted, so she’d found ways to get it herself.

Henry confronted her. She broke down, crying, admitted she had “expensive taste” and didn’t want to wait years for the things she saw other women enjoying. He gave her an ultimatum: stop or it’s over.

She promised to stop.
She did not.

Over the next years, Henry caught her again and again—different men, same pattern. Each time she pleaded, promised, and begged to be forgiven. Each time he stayed, but something in him hardened. He stopped talking about marriage. Stopped making long-term plans. Stopped letting himself believe she could be a wife he could trust.

Later, Henry would describe it simply: “I believed she could stop. I didn’t believe she would change.”

Leslie, however, was fixated on the idea that she could bend him to her will.

II. The “Plan”: Using Another Man

As her mid-30s ticked by, Leslie felt trapped.

Friends were getting engaged and married. Social media reminded her daily that other women were “locking it down,” posting engagement rings and honeymoon trips. Meanwhile, she was in year seven with a man who no longer talked about their future.

One night, watching a romantic drama on a streaming platform, she saw a plot she thought she could replicate: a woman whose boyfriend wouldn’t commit used another man to make him jealous. When he saw her out with someone else, he panicked, realized her value, and proposed.

Leslie watched the film three times.

Then she imported its logic into her life.

She would not break up with Henry; she would stage his crisis. She would date another man not because she wanted him, but as a prop, a catalyst to force Henry into commitment. She convinced herself she could orchestrate his emotions if she just played the role convincingly enough.

Enter Smith Monroe.

Leslie met Smith at a community event through a mutual acquaintance. He stood off to the side near the buffet table, checking his phone, visibly uncomfortable in a room full of louder personalities.

Smith was 43, owned a small but successful property management business, dressed well, and projected a quiet, slightly awkward energy. He was not charismatic. He was not the center of attention. But he was financially stable, polite, and—most importantly—single, unaccustomed to being chased.

Leslie approached.

Within twenty minutes of conversation—smiles, soft touches on his arm, careful eye contact—Smith was captivated. He asked for her number. She gave it.

Their first coffee date was awkward. He spilled his drink, over-explained his job, apologized too much. Leslie did not care. She wasn’t there for chemistry; she was there for optics.

After the date, she posted a photo on social media: two coffee cups on a table, captioned simply, “Good company.” She knew Henry followed her accounts. She knew he’d see it.

He said nothing.

She escalated. A second date, this time with a photo of the two of them together, smiling. Henry noticed—through a mutual friend he began asking who the man was—but his response was not what she’d scripted.

When that friend told him Leslie was “seeing someone serious,” Henry replied:

“Good for her. It’s about time she found someone who can give her what she wants.”

He did not fight. He did not chase. He began seeing someone else.

Two months later, Henry proposed to a co-worker he described as steady, honest, and uninterested in his money.

Leslie found out the way she found most things: on social media. Photos of the ring, of Henry on one knee, of a woman she barely knew receiving everything she thought was hers by right.

Her “jealousy plan” had backfired spectacularly. Henry hadn’t panicked; he’d moved on.

And now she was left with a man she never wanted in the first place — a man who, unlike Henry, saw her as the best thing that had ever happened to him.

III. Trapped in a Marriage She Never Wanted

To Smith, Leslie was a miracle.

Women had not historically chosen him. He was not the type who drew attention in bars or parties. Rejections had been a defining theme in his romantic life. When Leslie focused on him—texting, answering his calls, laughing at his jokes—he interpreted it as genuine connection, not strategy.

Within months, he was thinking about a future with her. Within a year, he was ready to propose.

At an expensive restaurant, hands trembling, he pulled out a velvet box containing a diamond ring that cost him $45,000—more than he had ever spent on a single item in his life.

He told her she made him happy, that she made him feel like he mattered, that he didn’t want to lose her.

Leslie said yes.

Not because she loved him. Not because she saw a future with him. But because Henry had moved on, she had no financial safety net, and she saw no other way to avoid being alone and broke.

There was one condition: Smith’s attorney insisted on a prenup.

The terms were clear and unforgiving:

If Leslie divorced within the first year, she would receive nothing.

After one year, she would be entitled to 10% of his assets for each year of marriage.

Her friend Sandra Dixon warned her: “That prenup is a trap. If you bail early, you walk away with nothing.”

Leslie signed anyway. She believed she could survive twelve months, play the role of a dutiful wife, then file for divorce and cash out. In her mind, it was a temporary performance for a long-term payoff.

The wedding was small—a courthouse ceremony.

Smith’s brother, Paul, attended and didn’t bother hiding his skepticism.
Leslie’s mother refused to come, bluntly calling it a mistake.

Still, Leslie became Mrs. Monroe.

What she hadn’t accounted for was that Smith was emotionally all-in.

He bought her flowers. Made dinner reservations. Asked about what kind of bed she wanted, what paint color she preferred, whether she wanted a dog. He tried to start conversations about family, travel, routines.

Leslie was emotionally elsewhere.

She spent hours on her phone trying to reach Henry through mutual friends’ accounts, sending message after message:

“I made a mistake. It should have been you.”

“I said yes to the wrong man.”

“I still love you.”

Henry’s responses were minimal and increasingly cold:

“Stop contacting me.”

“I’m married now.”

“Leave me alone or I’ll block this number too.”

Meanwhile, Smith was trying to be a husband to someone who recoiled from his touch.

He tried to initiate intimacy; she claimed she was tired or not feeling well. He tried to talk; she stayed distant. His brother Paul noticed, privately warning him that something was off, that Leslie seemed emotionally checked out and always texting “someone named H.”

Smith wanted to believe her explanations — that it was just a cousin, a friend, someone harmless.

Within two weeks of the wedding, that lie fell apart.

IV. The Tattoos and the Text

On the seventh day of their marriage, Leslie approached Smith with what sounded like a harmless request:

“Can I get a tattoo?”

Smith wasn’t a fan of tattoos, but he was a man trying to make his new wife happy. She told him it would make her feel more confident. He agreed.

Leslie went to a local studio, Ink & Soul Tattoo, bringing with her a photo of handwritten initials: H.B.

Tattoo artist Jazelle Hartman later told investigators that the session made her uneasy. Leslie had been very specific about design and placement—one tattoo on her chest, over her heart, and one near her pubic area. During the session, Leslie FaceTimed a man, showing him the design as the needle buzzed.

Jazelle overheard fragments:

“Look, I’m getting them done right now.”

“I don’t care if you’re married.”

“You think I wanted to marry him? I wanted you.”

When the tattoos were finished, Leslie paid in cash and left.

That evening, she came home and showed Smith the one on her chest: a heart with elegant script letters “HB.”

“What does it stand for?” he asked.

“Heartbeat,” she replied. “Because you make my heart beat faster.”

He wanted to believe her. Something felt off, but he suppressed the feeling. When he asked to see the second tattoo, she told him it was “in a private spot” and that she’d show him later.

She never did.

Two days later, while Leslie slept on the couch watching an Orlando–Miami NBA game, her phone lit up.

Smith glanced over and saw a message preview that froze him in place:

“I still miss us.”

The sender: Henry Brandon.

The name alone shattered the “cousin, Harmony” lie.

He picked up the phone, used her fingerprint to unlock it, and scrolled through months of messages.

He found:

The photo of Leslie at the tattoo parlor, shirt pulled down, fresh ink on her chest. Caption:

“Guess whose initials are on me forever.”

Her message:

“I got these tattoos for you. I marked my body for you.”

Henry’s response:

“You need help. I’m married now. Stop this.”

Messages outlining her plan:

“I’m only with him until I can divorce him and take his money.”
“Once I hit the one-year mark, I’m filing for divorce and coming back to you.”

And, perhaps most gutting of all:

“I’ll always be yours. Even when I’m in his bed.”

In that moment, Smith understood that his entire marriage was not just a mistake—it was a con.

A marriage of convenience for her. A marriage of meaning for him.

He did not confront her that night. Instead, he checked into a hotel, called his brother in tears, and by morning was at his lawyer’s office initiating divorce proceedings.

By 6 p.m. that same day, he walked back into his house with a manila envelope in hand.

V. “You Have 48 Hours to Leave”

Leslie was on the couch when he came in.

“Where were you last night?” she demanded.

“Hotel,” he said flatly. “Read this.”

He handed her the envelope. She opened it and saw the words at the top: Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Her face drained of color.

“Why? What did I do?” she asked.

He laughed once, bitterly.

“You tattooed another man’s initials on your chest and between your legs while married to me,” he said. “You lied. You planned to rob me.”

She tried to deny, then cried, begged, promised to change. But the prenup had shifted the power balance. Smith no longer had to debate whether he could afford to leave.

He told her simply:

“The prenup says if we divorce in the first year, you get nothing. You have 48 hours to get out of this house. After that, I change the locks.”

When she protested that she had nowhere to go, no money, no job, he responded:

“Call the man whose initials you’re wearing. See if he’ll take you.”

Then he packed a suitcase and left.

For the first time, Leslie’s fantasy collapsed into a hard, immovable reality. Henry didn’t want her. Smith was divorcing her. Her mother refused to take her in. She had a prenup blocking any payout and less than two days to figure out her next move.

That night, in desperation, she called her friend Sandra Dixon.

VI. The Conversation That Changed Everything

Phone records show that Leslie and Sandra spoke for 47 minutes after the divorce papers were dropped on the coffee table.

Leslie cried, complained, described the prenup, the 48-hour deadline, the tattoos, the discovery.

Sandra listened.

At some point in that call, according to both text messages and later testimony, Sandra asked the question prosecutors would call the turning point:

“How much would you get if he died before the divorce was finalized?”

Leslie froze. She later admitted she did not hang up. She did not tell her friend the idea was insane. She asked Sandra to “keep talking.”

Over the next several minutes, Sandra laid out the brutal math of timing:

If Smith died while still legally married, his estate would default to his wife.

If he survived long enough for the divorce to finalize, Leslie would walk away with nothing.

Sandra would later insist she had been “thinking out loud,” not deliberately encouraging murder. But her follow-up texts painted a clearer picture:

“Timing matters.”

“If something happens before it’s final, everything changes.”

Two days later, she arrived at Leslie’s house with a black case.

Inside was a .38 caliber revolver, its serial number filed off.

VII. The Murder

February 25 — the second day of the 48-hour countdown.

Smith woke up at his brother’s house. He felt shattered, humiliated, but also resolved. He would follow through on the divorce. He would remove Leslie from his home and move on.

He scheduled movers, called a locksmith, and checked in with his lawyer. From a legal standpoint, everything was in motion.

That afternoon, he texted Leslie:

“Coming home at 8:30. Be ready to talk logistics.”

She replied:

“Okay.”

What he didn’t know: earlier that day, Sandra had handed Leslie the revolver and walked her through a script.

According to Sandra’s later confession, she told Leslie to:

Hide the gun in the couch cushions.

Wait for Smith to come home.

Stage a robbery afterward.

Hit and scratch herself to simulate an attack.

Claim two masked men had burst in looking for a safe, assaulted her, and shot Smith.

“Make it look random,” Sandra texted.
“Make it look violent.”

Leslie agreed.

At 8:32 p.m., Smith pulled into his driveway, bottle of bourbon and briefcase in hand. He told himself this would be the last hard conversation. He’d deliver the logistics—when movers were coming, when she had to leave—and then they’d never have to speak again.

When he entered, Leslie was on the couch. The house looked normal. The TV played quietly in the background.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Leslie insisted they speak before he started packing her things. The argument followed a trajectory later reconstructed from her confession: he reiterated the 48-hour deadline, the prenup, and the fact that she had used him. She responded with tears, apologies, shifting quickly from pleading to resentment.

Then, with her hand slipping beneath the cushion exactly where she had hidden the revolver, she made the decision she had been circling for 48 hours.

She drew the gun and pointed it at him.

He froze.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, according to her own statement. “But it has to be this way.”

Then she fired.

Forensic analysis later showed multiple shots to the torso and shoulder, followed by additional rounds as he fell and attempted to move. Police and medical reports documented a barrage of bullets far beyond what would be necessary to incapacitate a person.

In total, Smith sustained fifteen gunshot wounds.

Three of those were to the head at close range—an execution pattern prosecutors emphasized repeatedly at trial.

The final shots, said a forensic pathologist, were not consistent with panic.

They were consistent with certainty.

VIII. The Staged Robbery and the 911 Call

Once the gun clicked empty, Leslie stood in the silence of what she had done.

Her husband’s body lay on the floor near the entryway, bleeding heavily. His eyes were open. The damage was catastrophic and irreversible.

She moved quickly into phase two: staging.

She:

Smashed a lamp, scattering glass.

Knocked over a coffee table and chair.

Used her fingernails to scratch her arms.

Hit herself in the face with the base of the broken lamp to create bruising.

Tore her shirt.

Then she waited.

Eight minutes passed with her alone in that house, blood on her hands and clothes, rehearsing the story she would tell.

At 9:10 p.m., she dialed 911.

Recordings of the call later became central evidence. Leslie screamed into the phone that “two men” had broken in, wearing dark clothes and masks, demanding a safe. She told the dispatcher they’d hit her, then shot her husband and fled out the back door.

The dispatcher coached her to stay on the line, asked if she was injured, whether the suspects were still inside. Leslie sobbed, shouted, and begged for help.

But forensic audio analysts noticed something chilling: in the middle of what appeared to be hysterical sobbing, her voice abruptly shifted—flattened—as she asked, in a calm, measured tone:

“How long until they get here?”

Then she resumed screaming.

That three-second break in performance would later be played to the jury again and again.

IX. The Crime Scene That Didn’t Match the Story

First responders arrived within minutes.

Paramedics quickly determined that Smith was beyond help. Detectives Raymond Hayes and Nia Thornton were among the first investigators to walk through the front door.

Almost immediately, they noticed problems:

No forced entry. The front door was intact; there were no kicked-in panels, no damaged locks, no broken glass.

No signs of escape. The back door showed no damage, and the yard contained no footprints or disturbed landscaping consistent with fleeing suspects.

Nothing stolen. Smith’s wallet still contained cash. Electronics remained. No jewelry appeared missing.

Leslie’s injuries looked suspicious to medical staff: symmetrical facial bruises and straight, consistent scratch marks on her arms.

“Could be an attacker,” one paramedic told Hayes, “but could just as easily be self-inflicted.”

Crime scene technicians documented blood spatter on and around the couch. Cushions showed impressions and staining suggesting someone had been sitting close when shots were fired—and a small gap between cushions hinted that something had been concealed there and removed.

“The gun was in this couch,” Hayes concluded. “She waited for him to come home and ambushed him.”

While the scene was processed, Leslie was transported to the station for a formal statement.

On the porch, as officers cordoned off the house, Smith’s brother Paul arrived, having been notified of his brother’s death.

When told that Leslie claimed a robbery gone wrong, Paul’s response was immediate:

“Don’t believe a word she says.”

He explained the divorce papers, the prenup, the tattoos, and the discovery that had driven his brother to leave.

“She had everything to lose,” Paul told detectives. “And if he died before the divorce went through, she’d get everything.”

With motive in place and the physical scene undermining the home invasion story, detectives moved quickly.

X. Breaking the Alibi: Sandra and the Phone Records

At the station, Leslie repeated her story: two masked men, dark clothes, guns, demands for a safe, a blow to the face, her husband walking into chaos and being cut down.

Under questioning, the details shifted.

First, she insisted the front door had been kicked in — but when told there were no signs of damage, she said they might have “picked the lock.”

She described vague suspects: “tall,” “wearing black,” “maybe six feet,” “I was too scared to be sure.”

She admitted Smith had served her divorce papers, but framed herself as a terrified, abandoned wife, not a woman with financial motive.

When detectives confronted her with the lack of forced entry and the fact nothing had been stolen, she claimed the attackers must have “panicked when they heard sirens.”

Simultaneously, detectives pulled her phone records.

A 47-minute call to Sandra Dixon the night she received the divorce papers. Multiple texts afterward.

Those texts, obtained via warrant, destroyed the robbery narrative.

“Don’t call me after. Don’t mention me,” Sandra wrote.

“Make it look random. Violent.”

“You need to make injuries on yourself look real.”

Police arrested Sandra before dawn.

Confronted with the messages and the threat of decades in prison, she admitted:

She had procured the .38 revolver from a cousin’s boyfriend.

She had brought it to Leslie in a black case.

She had suggested staging a robbery.

She had coached Leslie on how to act and what to tell police.

Within hours, detectives also arrested the gun supplier, Darnell Crawford, on weapons charges. In exchange for a plea deal, he confirmed the unregistered revolver sale to Sandra.

The only piece missing was the weapon itself.

Leslie had thrown it into a storm drain several blocks away. After three days of searching, police recovered a rusted but functional .38. Ballistics matched it to the bullets removed from Smith’s body.

With the gun, the texts, the staged scene, and a clear financial motive, the case against Leslie was overwhelming.

Detectives offered her one last chance to tell the truth.

When they informed her that Sandra was in the next room “telling us everything,” and that prosecutors might consider her cooperation, Leslie’s façade finally cracked.

According to recorded interviews, she admitted:

She knew about the prenup and the financial consequences.

She understood that if Smith died before the divorce was final, she would inherit.

She had hidden the gun in the couch.

She had waited for him to return, argued with him, and shot him repeatedly.

She had injured herself and staged the house.

She had fabricated the story of masked intruders.

Asked why she did it, she answered simply:

“I didn’t see any other way.”

For law enforcement, that statement was the clearest window into her mindset: she had constructed a world where murder felt like a financial solution.

XI. Trial: The Tattoos on Display

Eight months later, State v. Leslie Pope Monroe began.

The prosecution framed the case as a textbook example of premeditated murder for financial gain, driven by a toxic mix of entitlement and obsession.

Prosecutor Clifton Rea opened by showing the jury two images: one of Smith alive, smiling; the other of him dead on his floor.

He then showed the third image that would come to define the trial: a booking photo of Leslie, her jail uniform partially visible, and just above the neckline, the tattoo:

H.B. in a heart, over her chest.

Rea walked the jury through:

The seven-year relationship with Henry

The repeated cheating

The prenup

The tattoos

The divorce papers

The 47-minute call to Sandra

The gun

The staged scene

The confession

The defense, led by public defender Jolene McBride, did not have many tools. Leslie had confessed. The physical evidence was consistent. The staged robbery story had collapsed.

They tried to frame Leslie as a woman in psychological crisis: diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, terrified of abandonment, financially cornered, and acting impulsively rather than coldly.

A forensic psychologist testified that Leslie exhibited “obsessive attachment patterns” and “narcissistic tendencies,” struggling to accept rejection or loss of control.

But cross-examination kept returning to the same hard facts:

She had time to plan.

She procured a gun through a third party.

She hid it and waited.

She fired fifteen shots.

She staged injuries.

She called 911 and fabricated a story.

In what many legal observers called a fatal tactical error, the defense allowed Leslie to testify.

She tried to portray herself as overwhelmed and panicked. Under questioning by her attorney, she said she “never meant to kill him,” that “everything happened so fast,” that she had “just grabbed the gun and couldn’t stop.”

Then the prosecutor stood up.

He walked her step by step through the tattoos.

Yes, H.B. stood for Henry Brandon, not heartbeat.

Yes, she got the tattoos after marrying Smith.

Yes, she sent Henry photos proudly displaying them.

Yes, she told Henry she was “only with [Smith] until I can divorce him and take his money.”

Yes, she texted that she would “come back to” Henry after using Smith.

Finally, he asked:

“Isn’t it true, Mrs. Monroe, that you killed your husband because he was divorcing you, the prenup meant you’d get nothing, and you preferred to be a widow with his estate rather than an ex-wife with nothing?”

On the stand, in front of the jury, Leslie answered:

“Yes.”

Whatever sympathy might have existed evaporated in that moment.

After four hours of deliberation, the jury convicted her of first-degree murder. The court later sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Sandra Dixon, who had taken a plea in exchange for testifying, received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy and weapons offenses.

Darnell Crawford received an eight-year federal sentence for illegal firearms trafficking.

XII. Aftermath: Three Lives Destroyed

The fallout rippled far beyond the courtroom.

Smith’s family buried a man who had spent most of his life searching for a partner, only to be killed by the woman who finally said yes. His brother Paul became his most vocal defender, pushing back on narratives that tried to fold the case into simplistic “relationship drama.” To him, it was betrayal and murder.

Sandra Dixon lost her freedom and whatever reputation she had. In prison, she reportedly clashed verbally with Leslie, each blaming the other for “ruining everything.”

Leslie, now inmate Pope Monroe, spends her days in a maximum-security women’s facility. Other inmates reportedly view her with disdain; women who kill in response to abuse sometimes find a strange respect behind bars. Those who kill for greed do not.

She requested removal of the H.B. tattoos multiple times. The state declined to pay for elective cosmetic procedures. She will likely die with the same initials over her heart and in her most intimate area—permanent marks of the ex who didn’t want her and the husband she killed because of it.

And then there is Henry Brandon.

Though he was never charged with anything, his name became inextricably linked to the case. When the media discovered that the initials on her body matched his name, headlines wrote themselves.

He granted a single interview months later, stating:

He never asked her to get the tattoos.

He repeatedly told her to stop contacting him.

He believed she was obsessed with the idea of marriage, not with him personally.

Public reaction was mixed. Some blamed him for “stringing her along” for seven years. Others countered that no one is obligated to marry someone simply because of the time invested, and that Leslie’s choices were her own.

Henry eventually deleted his remaining social media accounts and withdrew from public discourse, another person collateral to a crime he did not commit.

XIII. Lessons from the H.B. Case

The case of Leslie Pope Monroe is not just lurid true-crime material built around tattoos and an outrageous title. It is a hard lesson in several uncomfortable truths:

Obsession plus entitlement can be lethal.

Leslie believed she was owed a certain life: a marriage on her terms, a financial cushion, and emotional control over the men in her orbit. When reality diverged from that script, she did not adjust her expectations; she tried to enforce them—with violence.

A prenup did its job—but triggered a new risk.

Legally, the prenuptial agreement protected Smith from being financially exploited in a divorce. But by making early divorce financially worthless to Leslie, it also sharpened the contrast between “leaving with nothing” and “inheriting everything.” The agreement did not create her capacity for harm, but it defined the stakes.

Friends can become co-conspirators.

Sandra likely did not see herself as a future felon when she first answered that late-night call. But instead of steering her friend toward help, she entertained and operationalized the darkest option on the table. Her willingness to “problem-solve” without boundaries cost a man his life and cost her 15 years of freedom.

Tattoos and text messages can tell the story a killer won’t.

The H.B. tattoos were more than bad taste—they were physical evidence of ongoing emotional infidelity and obsession. Combined with text messages, they gave jurors a timeline, a motive, and a clear look into Leslie’s thinking leading up to the murder.

Refusing a relationship is not a crime.

Henry’s choice not to marry Leslie, and later to marry someone else, became a focal point for public judgment. But the law, and the facts, remain clear: his decisions did not force Leslie to kill. Rejection, however painful, never justifies homicide.

In the end, three lives were destroyed:

A husband who believed he was finally loved.

A woman who mistook manipulation for strategy.

A friend who confused loyalty with criminal complicity.

The initials on Leslie’s skin were supposed to be a declaration of love. Instead, they became evidence.

The prenup was supposed to be a shield. Instead, it became part of the story of why she pulled the trigger.

And the marriage that was supposed to last a lifetime barely survived two weeks before ending in blood on the living-room floor.